John Boehner and Mitch McConnell play good cop, bad cop

Here’s how different things are for House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the upcoming fiscal cliff negotiations.

McConnell warned President Barack Obama on the floor Tuesday against “thumbing his nose” at the GOP and insisting that “if Republicans aren’t willing to do things his way, he won’t do anything at all.” On the same day, Boehner’s chief aide, Mike Sommers, quietly headed down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to discuss negotiations with Rob Nabors, Obama’s top legislative hand.

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The two GOP leaders are on the same page substantively — they both vehemently oppose increases in tax rates. But their Jekyll and Hyde roles on the Hill couldn’t be clearer: Boehner is in charge of governing; McConnell is in charge of the opposition. McConnell needs Boehner to help show the GOP is ready to cut a deal while Boehner needs McConnell to show the conservative base — and the president — that they won’t compromise their party’s principles.

How these negotiating tactics play out for Boehner and McConnell will not only go a long way toward determining their own standing in the party but also will have a real impact on the tax rates for millions of Americans and the future of U.S. deficit reduction.

Top GOP lawmakers in both chambers are watching their leaders closely.

“The role of the minority is to provide a contrast and to hold the other side accountable, and the role of the majority is to govern,” said Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican running for the House’s No. 4 spot in Thursday’s leadership elections. “And so, there’s a natural tension between the House Republican majority and the Senate Republican minority.”

The dynamic has been abundantly clear after the two leaders held a private meeting Wednesday in the aftermath of last week’s GOP losses that shrank McConnell’s Senate minority by two seats and cost them a shot at the White House.

When Boehner struck a conciliatory bipartisan tone last week, McConnell took a hard line against Obama with a simple message: no tax hikes. When Boehner called on the president to lead him to a deal, McConnell took a sharper line, warning that Obama “doesn’t own the place.”

And as Boehner sat down with ABC News and conducted news conferences to communicate the GOP’s view to a mainstream audience, McConnell talked to a conservative opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal and gave exclusives to conservative outlet Breitbart News ensuring his party will not simply cave to the president’s demands.

“Most people may focus on the White House, but the fact is the government is organized no differently today than it was after the Republican wave of 2010,” McConnell said in a sternly worded floor speech Tuesday, his first public appearance since the elections last week. “Look out across the heartland and you’ll see vast regions of the country wary of the president’s vision for the future.”

Readers' Comments (36)

McConnell is worried he will be out flankened by some Tea Party new comer in 2014 for not being tough enough - he could be the next Dick Lugar. The good news for him is his demographics don't include immigration reform! Interesting how the holders of the faith don't have the immigration issue coming at them at home.

Boehner will deal. He wants to go down as a great Speaker of the House and this would go a long way.

This little theater act is entertaining. And what Alexander wants to kick the fiscal cliff down the road and create more havoc? Where do they come up with this stuff.

A couple of nit wits still trying to be the big white kahuna's in charge. If they only knew how sad and embarassing they looked. They look like pigs rooting around in the mud for some garbage, as they seek for their own glory. They have turned their backs on the people of this country for their own personal and pathetic egotistical power seeking gain, and they think the people are going to accept their deceitful actions for another four years.

They have not yet figured out the people are one. Every nation, culture, gender, and age have learned to come together except these men on their long held high horses.

While they talk about half the nation wanting hand outs they are continually stealing money out of our hard working pockets.

McConnell is a goner no matter what. If he doesn't make a deal, there goes the House in 2014. If he does make a deal, some tea party nut case will blow him away in the primary. Either way he is screwed.

Who believes McConnell will work with Obama? Don't forget this is the same senator, who from day one, refused to work across the aisle from Obama, and whose main goal was that Obama should. fail. Countless times, he was obstructive to the President. To say Boehner, McConnell play good cop, bad cop is a nieve way of looking at McConnell's fostering of gridlock in the Senate. He is the "get nothing done" leader, a disgrace to any notion of working with Democrats. Boehner at least cares about our country and has made some effort at working with the President and appears willing to assert himself in a bipartisan way. McConnell, on the other hand, has embraced Tea Party principles and has signed Grover Norquest's "No Tax Pledge", taking the country done a narrow and out of touch path, failing even to consider much needed cuts in government spending and raises in revenue.

As long as Boehner & McConnell lead their shrinking party in battling against raising tax rates on the richest, they remind us they haven't figured out their biggest political problems are bigotry and faithfully serving only the richest, not the vast rest of US. Republicans need to endorse President Obama's desire to raise the top rate. Boehner & McConnell should immediately agree to pass the tax-cut extension of the Bush tax cuts while letting the higher, bigger tax cuts for the filthy rich expire. They could help the Republican Party (sorely in need of help) become once again the party of Lincoln, for all of US and not just big business bootlickers and loyal servants to the rich. I doubt they do it, though. Why not? Because the Republican Party truly has become the pawn of the selfish, greediest, richest ones. It's tied to their bigotry and need to feel superior and look down their noses on the 47% or actually more like 90% of US.

President Obama has never been one known as a strong, loyal party man. Since he wouldn't walk across the street to help elect other Democrats, so worried about his own victory, now would be a good time to help elect a Democratic Congress. No longer facing an election but facing a scarier challenge -- his legacy -- President Obama should campaign for his specific tax cuts and tax rate raises, his specific cuts versus the Republicans' proposed cuts. He should take his and the Democrats' just cause to the people of our country. Take his argument right into Republican districts; threaten all House Republicans with landslide defeats in 2014. Polls and surveys show the majority (60% and up) of Americans support President Obama's raising taxes on the rich. Our president should show the country what exactly Republicans hold hostage in negotiations, what exact extortionist demands the Republicans make. This should not only increase Obama's leverage in negotiations; it would also help elect a Democratic House and Super Majority Senate, two things our country needs to grow jobs quickly.

(I think President Obama should include entitlements in the negotiations, even though Social Security is no real problem yet and won't be for years. He should suggest means testing for both programs and should remove any arbitrary tax cap on the programs. These are two ways to enrich both programs and help the rich help more than they have been helping.)

These 2 men need to be called out repeatedly as being the idiots they are. To say they are both incompetent is to understate the obvious. Politico itself needs to go away. I followed your web site over the course of the election, about 6 months, and find Politico about as brain dead as Mitch McConell. Politico is a glossy self-appointed glamour space with the most dumb ass writers I have seen lately. It is clearly a collection of hacks who, like broken clocks, being occasionally correct, promote themselves far more than they promote the facts of any situation. If at some point any of your so-called journalists ever actually take a stand on a subject that matters I might come back....but as it is, you are just a waste of time. If you were to actually tell the truth about these two republican morons, perhaps you could gain some credibility, but you will never do that. Politico : delete.

McConnell was the guy in the last Congress that help break the deadlocks over raising the debt limit and passing the sequestration bill. He is bipartisan, as is Boehner. Only wehn the President says, "Give me the tax increases on the wealthy now. After that we can negotiate on other things you might be interested in doing."

The only ones who have passed a budget in the last several years has been the House.

Why won't the Senate work with the House and offer its budget in response?

I find it so interesting that Neoconservatives can so easily be blinded by their own ignorance. Look at what you're saying....the House passes a "budget" that none of them believe will actually work, with ZERO Democrat support. Then it gets to the Democratcially-controlled Senate and dies, because it is just reindeer games, there's no substance to the House budget (did you ever once hear Paul Ryan making sense of it when he was asked hundreds of times during the campaign?). When the Senate passes a budget that gets no GOP support, it dies in the House. Also reindeer games by Reid and his folks. Wake up.

McConnell was the guy in the last Congress that help break the deadlocks over raising the debt limit and passing the sequestration bill. He is bipartisan, as is Boehner. Only wehn the President says, "Give me the tax increases on the wealthy now. After that we can negotiate on other things you might be interested in doing."

Come on, if you're going to tell a story, make it interesting. Throw in flying cars, space aliens, something. Your fiction is boring.

Boehner and McConnell can be rendered irrelevant by simply allowing the tax cuts for everyone to expire on Jan. 1, then on Jan. 2 offering legislation that would reinstate the cuts for all but the wealthiest 1 or 2 percent of the population.

Boehner and House Republicans would then be placed in the unteneable position of voting against tax cuts. McConnell would be, well, insignificant.

Whether the president takes this route or another, he has the upper hand and will never be in a stronger position. It's not much in his nature, but he needs to use the White House's clout, and remind Republicans that opposition to tax cuts would be very hard for them to explain in the 2014 mid-terms.

Giving in (again) on tax cuts for the ultra rich would be difficult for progressives to swallow after expending so much energy on the president's re-election effort.

PRESIDENT IS THE ONLY ELECTED OFFICIAL WHO HAS A NATIONAL MANDATE! Of all the people elected on November 6, 2012 in the national elections, the President is the only one elected by all the American people. Everyone else is a constituency delegate. And the President was elected in a landslide. He also won the majority votes of the American people, not just the electoral votes. George W. Bush didn’t come close. Bush was anointed by the Supreme Court in a disputed election. His second term election was not as impressive as Obama’s. Yet, he felt mandated to do all the big things he tried to do, many of which are highly controversial, if not downright perverse. So, when you hear Republicans like McConnell and Paul Ryan saying the President didn’t have a mandate, know they are only being disingenuous and aggressively partisan. Republicans lost several seats in the House which they retained largely because of the gerrymandering of Republican governors who created constituency boundaries favorable to their party candidates. In the Senate, Democrats not only retained the Senate, but increased the ranks of Democrats. Any way you choose to cut it, Democrats are in a much stronger position than before the elections. Any attempt to thwart the President’s agenda that he campaigned on is a act against the will of the American people! Republicans never learn—and the people will make sure that they do! cosmojunction.com